[JPL] About Joe Cuba and "the Father of Latin Boogaloo"

[Arturo Gomez]

We are living in a time of mass competition for shrinking audiences and the
forever hyperbole is being exaggerated now more than ever, especially by the
younger members of the media whom tend to have less of a grasp of the past
and who don’t care to check facts for the most part. Gilberto Calderón-“Joe
Cuba” would be the first to get angry at the moniker “Father of the Latin
Booglaoo”, over the years he downplayed his role in popularizing the Latin
soul movement of NYC in the 1960s. Pete “Mr. Boogaloo” Rodríguez was the
band leader who set off the craze and was the main catalyst for the bugalú,
ching-a-ling and other soul latinos music and dances. Joe never allowed
himself to be crowned the father or king because he knew he wasn’t and
actually didn’t like performing that style of music but that was the rage so
he gave the audiences what they wanted. He lead a serious band years before
and decades after the short lived yet popular trend of  Latin soul that even
forced legendary band leaders like Machito, Tito Puente, Eddie and Charlie
Palmieri record Latin soul songs on their albums at the insistence of  the
producers who were looking for a cross over hit like what Ray Barretto and
Mongo Santamaría had gone through earlier in the 60s with El Watusi and
Watermelon Man, Yeah, Yeah! Respectively.

 

Here’s a anecdote about Joe Cuba Sextet and their mega crossover pop hit “El
Pito(the whistle) which  towards the end of the song morphs  into Manteca
and the group sings the refrain, “I’ll never go back to Georgia, I’ll never
go back”. Because it was a pop radio hit the governor of GA called Joe Cuba
and asked him why they sang that,  in order to avoid controversy he quickly
replied, Georgia is the name of my ex, and that was that. Dizzy sang the
same refrain because of the racism he faced in GA in the 40s and
50s

.obviously the governor of the state was not a jazz fan  or else he
would’ve probably called Dizzy too.

 

I find it curious that in the 1950s before the current situation between
Cuba and the USA developed that 2 recently deceased Puerto Ricans from NYC
became Cuban Pete and Joe Cuba in homage to the birthplace and roots of the
music now known as salsa.

 

Arturo